Once a bastion of poor and working class Irish Americans, Hell's Kitchen's location in Midtown has changed its personality since the 1970s. Though Hell's Kitchen's gritty reputation had long held real-estate prices below those of most other areas of Manhattan, by 1969, the City Planning Commission's Plan for New York City reported that development pressures related to its Midtown location were driving people of modest means from the area. Since the early 1990s, the area has been gentrifying, and rents have risen rapidly. Located close to both Broadway theaters and the Actors Studio training school, Hell's Kitchen has long been a home to learning and practicing actors, and, in recent years, to young Wall Street financiers.

The name "Hell's Kitchen" generally refers to the area from 34th to 59th Streets. Starting west of Eighth Avenue and north of 43rd Street, city zoning regulations generally limit buildings to six stories. As a result, most of the buildings are older, and are often walk-upapartments. For the most part, the neighborhood encompasses the ZIP codes 10019 and 10036. The post office for 10019 is called Radio City Station, the original name for Rockefeller Center on Sixth Avenue.[3]

The northern edge of Hell's Kitchen borders the southern edge of the Upper West Side. 57th Street is the traditional boundary between the two neighborhoods. However, Hell's Kitchen is often considered to extend further north to 59th Street, the southern edge of Central Park starting at Eighth Avenue, where the avenue names change; this neighborhood overlaps with the Upper West Side if this is considered to be Hell's Kitchen's northern boundary. Included in the 57th to 59th Street transition area are the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle, Hudson Hotel, Mount Sinai West, where John Lennon died in 1980 after being shot, and John Jay College.[3]

Several explanations exist for the original name. An early use of the phrase appears in a comment Davy Crockett made about another notorious Irish slum in Manhattan, Five Points. According to the Irish Cultural Society of the Garden City Area:

When, in 1835, Davy Crockett said, "In my part of the country, when you meet an Irishman, you find a first-rate gentleman; but these are worse than savages; they are too mean to swab hell's kitchen." He was referring to the Five Points.[4]

According to an article by Kirkley Greenwell, published online by the Hell's Kitchen Neighborhood Association:

No one can pin down the exact origin of the label, but some refer to a tenement on 54th Street as the first "Hell's Kitchen." Another explanation points to an infamous building at 39th as the true original. A gang and a local dive took the name as well.... a similar slum also existed in London and was known as Hell's Kitchen.[5]

Local historian Mary Clark explained the name thus:

...first appeared in print on September 22, 1881 when a New York Times reporter went to the West 30s with a police guide to get details of a multiple murder there. He referred to a particularly infamous tenement at 39th Street and Tenth Avenue as "Hell's Kitchen," and said that the entire section was "probably the lowest and filthiest in the city." According to this version, 39th Street between 9th and 10th Avenues became known as Hell's Kitchen and the name was later expanded to the surrounding streets. Another version ascribes the name's origins to a German restaurant in the area known as Heil's Kitchen, after its proprietors.[6] But the most common version traces it to the story of "Dutch Fred the Cop," a veteran policeman, who with his rookie partner, was watching a small riot on West 39th Street near Tenth Avenue. The rookie is supposed to have said, "This place is hell itself," to which Fred replied, "Hell's a mild climate. This is Hell's Kitchen."[7]

Hell's Kitchen has stuck as the most-used name of the neighborhood, even though real estate developers have offered alternatives of "Clinton" and "Midtown West", or even "the Mid-West". The "Clinton" name, used by the municipality of New York City, originated in 1959 in an attempt to link the area to DeWitt Clinton Park at 52nd and Eleventh Avenue, named after the 19th century New York governor.[8]

On the island of Manhattan as it was when Europeans first saw it, the Great Kill formed from three small streams that united near present-day Tenth Avenue and 40th Street, and then wound through the low-lying Reed Valley, renowned for fish and waterfowl,[9] to empty into the Hudson River at a deep bay on the river at the present 42nd Street.[10] The name was retained in a tiny hamlet called Great Kill, which became a center for carriage-making, while the upland to the south and east became known as Longacre, the predecessor of Longacre Square (now Times Square).[11]

One of the large farms of the colonial era in this neighborhood was that of Andreas Hopper and his descendants, extending from today's 48th Street nearly to 59th Street and from the river east to what is now Sixth Avenue. One of the Hopper farmhouses, built in 1752 for John Hopper the younger, stood near 53rd Street and Eleventh Avenue; christened "Rosevale" for its extensive gardens, it was the home of the War of 1812 veteran, Gen. Garrit Hopper Striker, and lasted until 1896, when it was demolished. The site was purchased for the city and naturalistically landscaped by Samuel Parsons Jr. as DeWitt Clinton Park. In 1911 New York Hospital bought a full city block largely of the Hopper property, between 54th and 55th Streets, Eleventh and Twelfth Avenues.[12] Beyond the railroad track, projecting into the river at 54th Street, was Mott's Point, with an 18th-century Mott family house surrounded by gardens that was inhabited by members of the family until 1884 and survived until 1895.[13]

A lone surviving structure that dates from the time this area was open farmland and suburban villas is a pre-1800s carriage house that once belonged to a villa owned by former Vice President and New York State governor George Clinton, now in a narrow court behind 422 West 46th Street.[15] From 1811 until it was officially de-mapped in 1857, the diminutive Bloomingdale Square was part of the city's intended future; it extended from 53rd to 57th Streets between Eighth and Ninth Avenues. It was eliminated after the establishment of Central Park,[16] and the name shifted to the junction of Broadway, West End Avenue, and 106th Street, now Straus Park. In 1825, the City purchased for $10 clear title to a right-of-way through John Leake Norton's[a] farm, "The Hermitage", to lay out 42nd Street clear to the river. Before long, cattle ferried from Weehawken were being driven along the unpaved route to slaughterhouses on the East Side.[17] Seventy acres of the Leakes' (later the Nortons') property, extending north from 42nd to 46th Street and from Broadway to the river, had been purchased before 1807 by John Jacob Astor and William Cutting, who held it before dividing it into building lots as the district became more suburban.

There were multiple changes that helped Hell's Kitchen integrate with New York City proper. The first was construction of the Hudson River Railroad, whose initial leg – the 40 miles (64 km) to Peekskill – was completed on September 29, 1849, By the end of 1849, it stretched to Poughkeepsie and in 1851 it extended to Albany. The track ran at a steep grade up Eleventh Avenue, as far as 60th Street. [18]

The formerly rural riverfront was industrialized by businesses, such as tanneries, that used the river for shipping products and dumping waste. The neighborhood that would later be known as Hell's Kitchen, started forming in the southern part of the 22nd Ward in the mid-19th century. Irish immigrants – mostly refugees from the Great Famine – found work on the docks and railroad along the Hudson River and established shantytowns there.

Mission House, Hell's Kitchen, c. 1915

After the American Civil War, there was an influx of people who moved to New York city. The tenements that were built became overcrowded quickly. Many who lived in this congested, poverty-stricken area turned to gang life. Following Prohibition, implemented in 1919, the district's many warehouses were ideal locations for bootleg distilleries for the rumrunners who controlled illicit liquor. At the start of the 20th century, the neighborhood was controlled by gangs, including the violent Gopher Gang led by One Lung Curran and later by Owney Madden.[19] Early gangs, like the Hell's Kitchen Gang, transformed into organized crime entities, around the same time that Owney Madden became one of the most powerful mobsters in New York. It became known as the "most dangerous area on the American Continent".

After the repeal of Prohibition, many of the organized crime elements moved into other rackets, such as illegal gambling and union shakedowns. The postwar era was characterized by a flourishing waterfront, and longshoreman work was plentiful. By the end of the 1950s, however, the implementation of containerized shipping led to the decline of the West Side piers and many longshoremen found themselves out of work. In addition, construction of the Lincoln Tunnel, Lincoln Tunnel access roads, and the Port Authority Bus Terminal and ramps destroyed much of Hell's Kitchen south of 41st Street.[20]-

In 1959, an aborted rumble between rival Irish and Puerto Rican gangs led to the notorious "Capeman" murders in which two innocent teenagers were killed. By 1965, Hell's Kitchen was the home base of the Westies, an Irish mob aligned with the Gambino crime family. It was not until the early 1980s that widespread gentrification began to alter the demographics of the longtime working-class Irish American neighborhood. The 1980s also saw an end to the Westies' reign of terror, when the gang lost all of its power after the RICO convictions of most of its principals in 1986.

Eighth Avenue was once lined with porn stores and theaters. The stores have been mostly gone since the late 1990s, but this particular store, which was highlighted in the 2003 film Phone Booth, remained until 2007.

Although the neighborhood is immediately west of New York's main business district, large-scale redevelopment has been kept in check for more than 40 years by strict zoning rules in a Special Clinton District[21] designed to protect the neighborhood's residents and its low-rise character.

In part to qualify for federal aid, New York developed a comprehensive Plan for New York City in 1969–70. For Hell's Kitchen, the master plan called for two to three thousand hotel rooms, 25,000 apartments, 25,000,000 square feet (2,300,000 m2) of office space, a new super liner terminal, a subway along 48th Street, and a convention center to replace what the plan described as "blocks of antiquated and deteriorating structures of every sort."[22][23] However, outrage at the massive residential displacement that this development project would have caused,[24] and the failure of the City to complete any replacement housing, led to opposition to the first project – a new convention center to replace the New York Coliseum.[25]

To prevent the convention center from sparking a development boom that would beget the rest of the master plan with its consequent displacement, the Clinton Planning Council and Daniel Gutman, their environmental planner, proposed that the convention center and all major development be located south of 42nd Street where public policy had already left tracts of vacant land.[26]

Nevertheless, in 1973 the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center was approved for a 44th Street site that would replace piers 84 and 86. But in exchange, the City first abandoned the rest of the 1969–70 master plan[27] and then gave the neighborhood a special zoning district to restrict further redevelopment.[28] Since then, limited new development has filled in the many empty lots and rejuvenated existing buildings. However, in 1978, when the city could not afford to construct the 44th Street convention center, the Mayor and Governor chose the rail yard site originally proposed by the local community.[29] Major office and residential development south of 42nd Street indeed followed, albeit much later, after the City planned the Hudson Yards Redevelopment Project and started construction on the 7 subway extension

The SCD was originally split into four areas:

Preservation Area: 43rd to 56th Streets between Eighth and Tenth Avenues. R-7 density, 6-story height limit on new buildings, suggested average apartment size of two bedrooms (this was a response to the fact that between 1960 and 1970 developers had torn down 2,300 family-sized units and replaced them with 1,500 smaller units).

Perimeter Area: Eighth Avenue, 42nd and 57th Streets. Bulkier development permitted to counterbalance the downzoning in the preservation area.

Mixed Use Area: Tenth and Eleventh Avenues between 43rd and 50th Streets. Mixed residential and manufacturing. New residential development only permitted in conjunction with manufacturing areas. Later combined into "Other Areas".

Other Areas: West of Eleventh Avenue. Industrial and waterfront uses. Later combined with "Mixed Use Area"

Special permits are required for all demolition and construction in the SCD, including demolition of "any sound housing in the District" and any rehabilitation that increases the number of dwellings in a structure. In the original provisions. no building could be demolished unless it was unsound. New developments, conversions, or alterations that create new units or zero bedroom units must contain at least 20% two bedroom apartments with a minimum room size of 168 square feet (16 m2). Alterations that reduce the percentage of two-bedroom units are not permitted unless the resulting building meets the 20% two-bedroom requirement. Finally, building height in the Preservation Area cannot exceed 66 feet (20 m) or seven stories, whichever is less.

As the gentrification pace increased, there were numerous reports of problems between landlords and tenants. The most extreme example was the eight-story Windermere complex at the southwest corner of Ninth Avenue and 57th Street. Built in 1881, it is the second-oldest large apartment house in Manhattan.[30][31]

In 1980, the then-owner, Alan B. Weissman, tried to empty the building of its tenants. According to former tenants and court papers, rooms were ransacked, doors were ripped out, prostitutes were moved in, and tenants received death threats in the campaign to empty the building. All the major New York newspapers covered the trials that sent the Windermere's managers to jail. Although the building's landlord, Alan B. Weissman, was never linked to the harassment, he and his wife made top billing in the 1985 edition of The Village Voice annual list, "The Dirty Dozen: New York's Worst Landlords."[32] Most of the tenants eventually settled and moved out of the building. As of May 2006, seven tenants remained[33] and court orders protecting the tenants and the building allowed it to remain in derelict condition even as the surrounding neighborhood was experiencing a dramatic burst of demolition and redevelopment. Finally, in September 2007, the fire department evacuated those remaining seven residents from the building, citing dangerous conditions, and padlocked the front door.[34] In 2008 the New York Supreme Court ruled that the owners of the building, who include the TOA Construction Corporation of Japan, must repair it.[35]

One impediment to development was that there was very little public transit in the area, which is far from Penn Station, and none of the proposals for a quick link to Penn Station were viable.[36] No changes to the zoning policy happened until 1990, when the city rezoned a small segment of 11th Avenue near the Javits Center.[42][43] In 1993, part of 9th Avenue between 35th and 41st Streets was also rezoned.[44][45] However, neither of these rezonings was particularly significant, as most of the area was still zoned as a manufacturing district with low-rise apartment buildings.[46]

By the early 1990s, there was a recession, which scuttled plans for rezoning and severely reduced the amount of development in the area.[47] After the recession was over, developers invested in areas like Times Square, eastern Hell's Kitchen, and Chelsea, but mostly skipped the Far West Side.[48]

Memorial to 15 firefighters from West 48th Street station who died on September 11, 2001

While most fire stations in Manhattan lost firefighters in the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the station with the greatest loss of firefighters was Engine 54, Ladder 4, Battalion 9 at 48th Street and Eighth Avenue, which lost 15 firefighters.[49] Given its proximity to Midtown, the station has specialized in skyscraper fires and rescues; in 2007, it was the second-busiest firehouse in New York City, with 9,685 runs between the two companies.[50] Its patch reads "Pride of Midtown" and "Never Missed a Performance". Memorials dot the station's exterior walls and a granite memorial is in a park to its north. Ladder 21, the "Pride of Hell's Kitchen", located on 38th Street between Ninth and Tenth Avenues, and stationed with Engine 34, lost seven firefighters on September 11.[51] In addition, on September 11, Engine 26 was temporarily stationed with Engine 34/Ladder 21 and lost many firefighters themselves.

Hell's Kitchen has become an increasingly upscale neighborhood of affluent young professionals as well as residents from the "old days",[52][53][54] with rents in the neighborhood having increased dramatically above the average in Manhattan.[55] It has also acquired a large and diverse community as residents have moved north from Chelsea. Zoning has long restricted the extension of Midtown Manhattan's skyscraper development into Hell's Kitchen, at least north of 42nd Street.[56] The David Childs and Frank Williams designed Worldwide Plaza established a beachhead when it was built in 1989 at the former Madison Square Garden site, a full city block between 49th and 50th Streets and between Eighth and Ninth Avenues that was exempt from special district zoning rules. This project led a real-estate building boom on Eighth Avenue, including the Hearst Tower at 56th Street and Eighth Avenue. An indication of how fast real estate prices rose in the neighborhood was a 2004 transaction involving the Howard Johnson's Motel at 52nd and Eighth Avenue. In June, Vikram Chatwal's Hampshire Hotel Group bought the motel and adjoining SIR (Studio Instrument Rental) building for $9 million. In August, they sold the property to Elad Properties for about $43 million. Elad, which formerly owned the Plaza Hotel, is in the process of building The Link, a luxury 44-story building.

The most prominent real estate project in the area is the Hudson Yards Redevelopment Project, which will include over 45 million square feet of commercial and residential development, a renovation of the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, and an extension of the IRT Flushing Line to the 34th Street – Hudson Yards station at 34th Street and 11th Avenue. This new station for 7<7> trains opened on September 13, 2015.[57][58] Hudson Yards includes a mixed-use real estate development by Related Companies and Oxford Properties over the MTA's West Side Yard which is expected to consist of 16 skyscrapers containing more than 12,700,000 square feet (1,180,000 m2) of new office, residential, and retail space. six million square feet (560,000 m2) of commercial office space, a 750,000-square-foot (70,000 m2) retail center with two levels of restaurants, cafes, markets and bars, a hotel, a cultural space, about 5,000 residences, a 750-seat school, and 14 acres (5.7 ha) of public open space.[59] Development on the rail yard site officially broke ground on December 4, 2012, with the first tower, an 895-foot (273 m) office building in the southeast corner of the site, expected to be complete in 2016.[60]

Based on data from the 2010 United States Census, the population of Hell's Kitchen (Clinton) was 45,884, an increase of 5,289 (13.0%) from the 40,595 counted in 2000. Covering an area of 422.45 acres (170.96 ha), the neighborhood had a population density of 108.6 inhabitants per acre (69,500/sq mi; 26,800/km2).[1]

Hell's Kitchen's side streets are mostly lined with trees. The neighborhood does not have many parks or recreational areas, though smaller plots have been converted into green spaces.

One such park is De Witt Clinton Park on Eleventh Avenue between 52nd and 54th streets,[61] across the West Side Highway from Clinton Cove Park. Another is Hell's Kitchen Park, built in the 1970s on a former parking lot on 10th Avenue between 47th and 48th Streets.[7]

The Clinton Community Garden, a neighborhood garden, is a result of the actors living in the area. Since they mostly work at night in the local theatres, they took time to create a garden in what was then a rubble-strewn lot on West 48th Street between Ninth and Tenth avenues[63] Eventually it contributed to the area's gentrification. Although the garden has a gate which requires a key, everyone who lives in Hell's Kitchen can apply for a membership and get a copy of the key.

With the opening of the original Improv by Budd Friedman in 1963, the club became a hangout for singers to perform but quickly attracted comedians, as well, turning it into the reigning comedy club of its time. Once located near West 44th Street and Ninth Avenue, it has since shuttered, replaced by a restaurant.

Manhattan Plaza at 43rd Street between Ninth and Tenth Avenues was built in the 1970s to house artists. It consists of two 46-story towers with 70% of the apartments set aside for rent discounts for those who work in the arts.[66]The Actors' Temple and Saint Malachy's Roman Catholic Church with its Actors' Chapel also testify to the long-time presence of show business people.

Ninth Avenue is noted for its many ethnic restaurants. The Ninth Avenue Association's International Food Festival stretches through the Kitchen from 42nd to 57th Streets every May, usually on the third weekend of the month.[68] It has been going on since 1974 and is one of the oldest street fairs in the city. There are Caribbean, Chinese, French, German, Greek, Italian, Irish, Mexican, and Thai restaurants as well as multiple Afghan, Argentine, Ethiopian, Peruvian, Turkish, Indian, Pakistani, and Vietnamese restaurants. Restaurant Row, so called because of the abundance of restaurants, is located on West 46th Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues. Notable establishments on Ninth Avenue include Mickey Spillane's, part-owned by the mobster's son, who also owns Mr Biggs on Tenth Avenue/43rd Street. There are more restaurants and food carts and trucks on Tenth Avenue between 43rd and 47th Streets, including Hallo Berlin.

The Lincoln Tunnel connects New York City to New Jersey. Parking lots dot the neighborhood, but are dwindling in quantity as developments are being built. Eleventh Avenue is lined with car dealerships, many of which claim to have the highest volume among all dealerships for their brands in the country.

Many of the horse-drawn carriages from Central Park stay in stables just off the West Side Highway. It is not uncommon to hear the sound of horses in the neighborhood. There have been calls for banning horse-drawn carriages, especially from Mayor of New York CityBill de Blasio following a handful of collisions between cars and carriages.[69][70][71] The carriage horses live in historic stables originally built in the 19th century, but today boast the latest in barn design, such as fans, misting systems, box stalls, and state-of-the-art sprinkler systems. As horses always have in densely populated urban areas, the carriage horses live upstairs in their stables while the carriages are parked below on the ground floor.[72][73]

Cruise ships frequently dock at the New York Passenger Ship Terminal in the 48th to 52nd piers called Piers 88, 90, 92. Cruise ship horns are a common sound in the neighborhood. Several French restaurants opened on West 51st Street to accommodate traffic from the French Line. The piers originally built in 1930 are now considered small, and some cruise traffic uses other locations. Other ship operations in the neighborhood include Circle Line Sightseeing Cruises at West 42nd and the NY Waterway ferry service.

The Marvel Comics superhero Daredevil (Matt Murdock), born and raised in Hell's Kitchen, resides in, and intermittently operates his law office out of the neighborhood.

Jessica Jones, another Marvel superhero, also hails from Hell's Kitchen.

Within the southern opening of the Freedom Tunnel, the former "shantytowns" constructed by homeless people, now cleared, gave rise to the urban legend of "mole people", as seen in the documentary Dark Days and in Jennifer Toth's book The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York.

Michael Alig, founder of the Club Kids, lived at Riverbank West (560 West 43rd Street), Apartment 3K,[78] at 11th Avenue, which he described as "the place where I lived as part of my salary at Limelight"; it was the address where he and his roommate, Robert "Freeze" Riggs, killed Andre "Angel" Melendez[79]

Tim Rose (1940-2002), musician, lived on West 46th Street in Hell's Kitchen for a decade or more in the 1980s and 90s, and later referred to it as "skid row" in a song called "Because You're Rich."[citation needed]

^Norton, the great-nephew of John Leake, founder of Leake and Watts Children's Home, is listed among early 19th-century owners of considerable tracts in what is now Hell's Kitchen, with John Jacob Astor, William Cutting, Thomas Addis Emmet, Andrew Hopper, John Horn and William Wright.[13]

^Fertig, Beth. "Firemen on September 11th", WNYC, September 12, 2002. Accessed June 6, 2016. "But all seven members of Ladder Company 21 who raced downtown on the big truck that morning perished. None of the bodies was ever recovered."

^Bagli, Charles V. "Developer Signs Deal For Complex", The New York Times, January 13, 2004. Accessed June 6, 2016. "The Department of Housing and Urban Development agreed to steep rent subsidies for about 70 percent of the apartments for tenants working as film or television actors, singers, dancers, stagehands or musicians, if they met certain income limits."

^Jamieson, Wendell. "City Lore; Hard-Boiled Tales, Told by a Gentleman", The New York Times, January 1, 2006. Accessed August 11, 2009. "Benjamin Appel was an author of more than 25 novels from 1934 to 1977, many of them set in New York. He was raised in Hell's Kitchen in Manhattan and lived much of his life in Roosevelt, N.J., but after he moved he still came back to New York often."

^Friend, Tad. "Lewis Black, Playwright", The New Yorker, June 5, 2012. Accessed July 4, 2016. "In his living room high up in Hell’s Kitchen, the comedian Lewis Black sat on a sofa with three throw pillows tucked around him, as if he’d had a bad breakup and needed a hug and some Häagen-Dazs."

^Dargis, Manohla. "Roll the Fairy Tale, Fade to the Fists", The New York Times, June 3, 2005. Accessed July 8, 2016. "On June 13, 1935, the boxer James J. Braddock fought the fight of a lifetime. Born in Hell's Kitchen when that New York neighborhood still warranted that rough-and-tumble epithet, the 30-year-old heavyweight was the son of immigrants whose bloodlines and hardscrabble woes traced back to Ireland."

^Eldridge, David. American Culture in the 1930s, p. 74. Edinburgh University Press, 2008. ISBN9780748629770. Accessed July 8, 2016. "Born in New York City's Hell's Kitchen, Cagney brought something 'fresh' to the movie, a machismo that was natural, uncontrolled and seemingly spontaneous (as when he spits beer into someone's face), and imbued with a wise-guy wit."

^Staff. "Second Cup Cafe: Vanessa Carlton", CBS News, November 17, 2007. Accessed August 10, 2009. "A few years ago, this three-time Grammy nominee was living in New York's Hell's Kitchen and working as a waitress in Lower Manhattan between performances at open mic nights in the city's clubs."

^Kussoy, Howie. "You can’t understand Joakim Noah until you know where he came from", New York Post, October 28, 2016. Accessed March 3, 2017. "A life set up to be overshadowed started in Manhattan, but Noah grew up in one of Paris’ wealthiest suburbs, splitting time between his divorced parents. When he was 12, he moved to New York, living with his mother — who had moved to New York as a teenager — and younger sister, Yelena, near the corner of 51st Street and 10th Avenue. In Hell’s Kitchen, he was no longer the child of France’s favorite son."

^John Reed, Pen Parentis, October 5, 2013. Accessed March 3,2017. "I live with my wife and two young children in Hell’s Kitchen."

^Frankel, Bruce. "Rourke sits in on trial of pal Gotti", USA Today, March 17, 1992. Accessed August 10, 2009. "The bad-boy actor, who grew up in Hell's Kitchen in Manhattan, spent the morning in court on a 'family' – the Gotti family – pass, following transcripts of conversations between Gotti, Salvatore 'Sammy Bull' Gravano and others."

^Traub, James. "The Lord's of Hell's Kitchen", The New York Times, April 5, 1987. Accessed March 3, 2017. "By the Mid-1970'S, Control over Hell's Kitchen crime had passed to the mythically named Michael (Mickey) Spillane. A bookmaker, loan shark and murderer, Spillane was one of the last of the old-fashioned gangsters, handing out turkeys at Thanksgiving and paying visits to the elderly."

^Hunt, Denis. "Lisa Lisa Is Cookin' In Hell's Kitchen", Los Angeles Times, July 5, 1987. Accessed March 3, 2017. "To hear Lisa Velez talk, you'd think New York City's infamous Hell's Kitchen--a dangerous, drug-infested slum--was paradise.... Usually kids grow up in Hell's Kitchen with one thought: escaping as soon as they are able. But Velez, the youngest of 10 children, had a different goal. She wanted to be a singer."

^Turan, Kenneth. "MOTION PICTURES; Bruce Willis Looks for the Man Within the Icon", The New York Times, July 1, 1990. Accessed August 15, 2017. " Somewhere in Hell's Kitchen, hard by West 49th Street and 10th Avenue in Manhattan, there is an apartment with Bruce Willis's name on it. A railroad flat where, for $175 a month, he bivouacked as one of New York's small army of aspiring actors, it still remains, and not by accident, in the man's family."